Interview by Lölä Florina Vlasenko.
Randi Lindholm Hansen is a prose and script writer based in Denmark, Copenhagen. In Autumn 2023 she visited Oulu, Northern Finland, to work in Art Hub Pikisaari as a residency artist creating fiction and holding writing workshops and readings.
Within a residency at Pikisaari Randi Lindholm kindly shared curious and inspiring ways to read, to write and to listen. She was chatting with Oulu based journalist Lölä Florina Vlasenko.
What are your hacks to avoid anxiety and concentrate during writing – specific music, candle light, complete silence, etc?
When I write I always listen to audiobooks or podcasts – I need to hear someone else talking. It doesn’t work with music, weirdly it has to be a text or literature related conversation: craft of writing or filmmaking podcast, for example, or somebody´s essay reading, or an audiobook. This somehow focuses the part of my brain that would otherwise be distracted and procrastinating. Once this part of the brain is occupied, I have the space and calmness I need to dive into the writing.
Do you remember the moment writing transformed into a profession, when you thought “I want to go big – I want to be a writer”?
I still don´t know if I want to go big (smiles). I think I gradually discovered that writing was something I did all the time. It wasn’t something that I decided to do – I´ve always been doing it. When not writing, I was telling stories. Since early childhood I´ve been encouraged to share my perspective and outlook on life and the way I experience and observe the world. My parents always urged me to tell stories over the dinner table – stories of what I experienced that day. The better the story you could tell – the more interesting the conversation was. It is a gift and a privilege to have the space where the story is encouraged.
It didn’t occur to me for a long time though, that I could be a writer, that it was a profession and even a job. Not until I discovered scriptwriting. Films I loved to watch were written by someone! I started to study how. It has always been more about storytelling than interest in language for me. Scriptwriting is the art of saying as much as possible with as few words as possible. When you write for the screen, the empty space is a part of the story and opens ways for intuitive reading.
Giving space – or applying value to the empty space – is something I really enjoy, as well as taking away the expectations, like not having to write long for something to be considered ”serious good literature” (smiles). When writing prose I am still very preoccupied with the idea of building narrative and sharing my observations of the world by writing very short. I work with the beautiful genre of flash fiction – just as script writing, it is about getting as much story as you can into few lines of text.
How do you put as much as you can into as less as you take?
It is very much about leaving space for the reader to have an emotional reaction rather than telling what it should be. I am very allergic to the idea of people being told what to think or what to feel and I go contra on that. Creating a mood and an atmosphere for an individual reaction doesn´t take away from one’s experience of creating mental images or setting the storyworld.
You chose a method of writing which is very opposite to most horrible and common patterns which are happening to the world of words, where storytelling is often mutilated by propaganda and bias. You chose the method of freedom for the reader to make own conclusions. How do you survive in the world of words polluted with propaganda and misuse?
It would be hard for me to survive if I didn’t have this artistic outlet. I never thought of this writing method as the one of freedom, it is a very beautiful way of putting it! It has been freedom from length, relief from extensive, over-explained, word-heavy ways of sharing information. I am someone who sees the poetics in the world around me, even though it is not always present or clear. I find joy in identifying the beautiful moments between people in society which makes it very difficult to see this beauty and to believe in humanity.
I don’t consider myself a very politically engaged person. Partly because I live in a part of the world where it has been my privilege not to have to be that. I do not have the talent, capacity, words, intelligence to describe all the injustice that happens in this world. All I can do is tell what I see and expose it on the page. I try my best to emphasise the suffering and highlight the injustice of the world through texts. Often you can shine a light on it even though the injustice is not happening where you are based or to the people whom you personally know. It’s a lot about pointing it out to stand alone, with no comments. How much is left unsaid becomes a commentary and often highlights the hypocrisy.
What is it in the power of words that you feel most fascinated about and that other art forms might not have?
I have discovered the power words have, because they allowed me to express myself when I couldn’t do it in any other media. I turned to the words because I don’t have other talents. I feel like this is the only thing I can do (smiles). My mom is a visual artist. As I grew up she very much encouraged me to draw, to paint, and I simply couldn’t express myself in this form. I also intensively tried to learn an instrument, but I did not have a musical talent either. Words remained my only way of expression, so for me they have become powerful.
I am a little bit impatient when it comes to materials or technical equipment. If I need something to do a project, I often turn my attention elsewhere and work somewhere else. Words and writing have been associated for me with freedom from materials. Of course, I need a pen and some paper, or a laptop. But this is all I need. I don´t need specific complicated software, I can write whenever on my phone. I am not dependent on a specific place or studio or workshop that I have to go to to access equipment. It emphasises my freedom to be what I want to be and to move around freely.
What points of connection with your audience do you find most inspiring? Do you picture the reader? Do you like reading your writings to people?
I never consider my audience in the writing process. I feel I write for myself. I have a story to tell, and to me it feels urgent and important. Sharing my stories and texts with the world is an afterthought, a lot of times I don´t do it at all and in general I don’t put as much effort into this part of the process as I probably should. I have, however, found that the best editing process for me is to share my texts with a live audience – to do a public reading.
When you’re a writer you’re often removed from the point where your texts meet an audience. When you do a live reading, you are allowed into a space where you can experience the immediate emotional reaction the audience has to your text.
It’s a bit different whether I work in script format or with flash fiction or short prose format. The script format requires a bit more organising to do a table read, but it is enjoyable to ask someone to read completely strange characters´ lines from a script they´ve never seen before. With flash fiction I made it a part of the process to meet a live audience very early on and to create a space around these texts. It is not until reading flash fiction stories aloud and having some reaction to them that I can feel in myself whether the text works or not.
It was a beautiful experience for me to do readings in Oulu. I shared the new material I had created in Art Hub Pikisaari. It was the first time the texts met an audience, unedited and untried, and I was reading with a pen in my hand. I could hear in reading these texts out loud, whether the rhythm and tone were right. I edited as we went on, and the texts became complete in this space.
Did you actually add the performance element into the writing doing the public reading?
Yes. I have tried to adopt the idea of performance reading: not just a reading, but activating the audience so they themselves feel a part of the performance. That has been extremely beneficial for me, but also quite fun for the audience. The interactive participatory moment that we share is very beautiful. People often find the performative aspect of the reading very surprising. I´ve often had people telling me they’ve never experienced anything like this before – normally the format of the reading is standardised, not a format that someone is challenging.
In my work I am also preoccupied with the idea of active listening and applying value to the role of the listener. I am also a part of the artists´ collective called Bureau for Listening, working with the idea of listening as an undervalued concept in modern society. If we all learnt to listen a bit better, the world might be a nicer place!
Have you experienced surprising reactions from the audience or the ones which made you smile when you didn’t expect?
Every time I do readings there is a moment like this. We had a conversation with the audience in Art Hub Pikisaari after the readings. All the texts that the audience talked about or drew attention to, were the texts that I felt maybe didn’t have a place in the collection I was working on. These were the texts I felt most unsure about, stuck with, thinking maybe they wouldn’t resonate as much as other texts. Then I had those reactions to them, hearing how they resonated intensely. It made me feel that those texts probably do have a place in the collection.
I feel like my little stories will have a different meaning every time you read them. You read them today – you will feel different when you read them tomorrow. Or if you read them with someone.
So much of it is between the lines and the subtext. A lot of what shapes a story is your own experience in the world as well as the mood you enter into the reading experience with, the state of your own life at that particular moment that you are reading the text…
Would you reveal what the stories you created in Art Hub Pikisaari in Oulu are about?
It collects multitudes. The collection I was working on here is very anchored in space – it is very influenced by where I was working on the different texts. So far I´ve been working on it in a couple of different locations, but always in the North. It has taken its form in Sweden, Denmark and Finland. It is very inspired by the landscape, seasons and atmosphere in those parts of the world. It is also very personal, based on my experiences and thoughts about the ways I exist in the world and the way I experience social connections in new places, meeting new people. Sounds very self-centered (laughs). Central themes are belonging, home, loneliness. But there’s also a lot of hope and a lot of love for places and people.
I work with a metaphor of islands and archipelago. It has somehow become a structure for this collection. I call it an archipelago of text and it allows me to have a lot of separate entities – stories – that are floating around in the same sea. Some days I feel like these texts don’t have anything to do with each other, they don’t even belong in the same room or in the same document. But whenever I have the readings I have a beautiful audience confirming that there is a clear narrative voice, a style and a tone that is shared throughout this collection. Somehow they do belong in the same space in the end…
How does the location affect your writing? Have you noticed big differences when writing in Denmark, Sweden, Northern Finland?
This space in particular – Art Hub Pikisaari – has been very special. It’s the first time I’ve arrived in the space and immediately felt like the words came to me. It didn’t take me very long to settle in – normally I do need a little bit of time to process transition from one place to another. I am also quite sensitive to space, so it takes me a while to arrive and to depart. I arrived in Art Hub Pikisaari in Oulu with all of these feelings of confusion and abruptness within me that came from other aspects of my life. But despite them I was able to write here on the island of Pikisaari (smiles)! And probably because of the fact that it is an island. It suited the project so well! I immediately was able to dive into the island collection that had already existed for over a year. I´ve developed more material here than in any other place I have been working on this collection. I find that I am only able to write stories for this collection when I am not in Copenhagen, my base and my home city. I don’t know if it’s about everyday life getting in the way or the urban landscape. But I do find leaving Copenghagen and going to a smaller place such as an island or deep of the Nordic scape helps this process.
These sound like the best parts of the format of artistic residency. For many it seems obviously a beautiful and fruitful thing to do in the context of art, multiculturalism and international collaboration. Yet not all the cities are generously supporting artistic residencies, unfortunately. What are your observations of artistic residencies format?
I love doing residencies and I´ve done a few at this point. The dedicated time to an artistic process the residency offers is pretty magical. It is the time away from everyday life, relations, responsibility and distractions. It comes with all the curiosity of arriving in a new place, which is very nurturing to a creative process of any kind.
I find that time has become a luxury commodity that I never have enough of. Going to a residency is an amazing way to insist on time. Whenever I am in the middle of a residency, I cannot imagine going back to the pace of my everyday life. I feel like allowing a certain slowness and attention to process and trusting in one’s own creative process are the ultimate ways of doing any creative work.
I enjoyed the residency in Oulu a lot. This island text collection has taken its form during residencies only. It was developed during three different residencies and the periods in between – which have of course been much longer than the residencies themselves (and very little material comes from those). Almost all of the material comes from being in these creative bubbles in the Nordic countries.
You brought your little helpers here. In Art Hub Pikisaari you had a table in the centre of the space full of books and objects. What was this installation about?
Those are tools I might not use, yet it is very nice to have them with me if I do need them. I´ve learnt about myself that my writing process is quite spatial. Often I need to touch something. Very often I feel I need to write by hand (which is of course very impractical). I find that having certain objects in the space where I work is very beneficial for the process.
So, in Art Hub Pikisaari I was having books I’ve brought and office supplies I have general fascination with (sometimes you just need a very specific type of paperclip, or stickers, or paper in different colours or different texture!) I´ve changed the contents of the table a couple of times. Everything was placed in order, in a particular way. This is the contrast of how my interior life looks like, normally extremely disorganised (laughs).
The books I brought to Pikisaari included a few about islands, as I’m working with the archipelago concept. One was Tove Jansson´s ”Notes From an Island” which is an account of building a house on an island. It includes beautiful thoughts and observations. Another one was my favourite of all time: ”Atlas of Remote Islands” by German artist Judith Schalansky. This is an atlas of fifty islands she has never been to and will never go to. Some of the most remote places on Earth, islands that are often uninhabited, or if not there is often just a handful of people living on them. It is beautifully written in between the formats of notes, history and storytelling.
I really like the way of reading where you don’t need to read from cover to cover. You open a book on a random page, and that’s where you read – that´s a story that was waiting for you. The idea of length and expectations of having to start on the first page and finish on the last can be overwhelming. I also trust my intuition. If I am drawn to a specific book, maybe this is the book I need to read. Then you read and feel this is exactly what you needed to read in this specific time of your life. I am inspired by how people have done writing or art, and also just life in general.
What inspires hope in you? You have been talking about the importance of active listening. If you knew now is the moment when everybody – or at least those whom you’d want to picture as good listeners – listens, what would you flash-say?
When I approach storytelling or writing, I always start close, small, intimate and near to the subject matter, being drawn to these microcosmic communities, places, moments. I start near the core, and then I move away. The subject matter is taken into the world, becoming an unsaid commentary for something. I often leave my stories open ended.
I find my hope in connections between people. I do have a lot of hope in humanity. I do believe in the good in people. I do believe that beautiful things rise in relations between people, this is where the magic happens.
When the world feels a bit overwhelming, you can focus on little things, the connection to one specific person, or a tiny object, or a table with inspiring materials. It can be as banal as looking at a beautiful flower. Observing two people sitting next to you in a cafe. Maybe if you actually make an effort to understand their story, you will automatically have a sense of why they react and exist as they do.
The concept I always keep in mind when working on anything is that it is impossible to hate anyone whose story you know. If you make an active deliberate effort to listen to people’s stories, there is so much hope! If you make an effort to understand where people are coming from, you will understand why we live in the world we do, and be able to find hope in the beauty of interpersonal connection.
We live in the world full of war, which is the opposite of listening.
I agree, war is insistence on speaking, dominating and taking space. Listening is full of generosity. It is about offering a space for someone to talk or be in, about offering attention to someone outside of yourself. It is a very beautiful way of living a life. You cannot have a dialogue without a listening party. The act of listening has been undervalued on a global scale for a very long time. Time to listen – to each other, to the planet, to elements of nature and society.
What text resonates with you most?
Text by Randi Lindholm Hansen.
COMMA
In punctuation, I am comma. I hold you, I offer you time to breath, a wanted pause without consequence. I’m not a statement. Not a reason to fully stop. I’m not gonna hold you accountable until you fuck with me, then all hell breaks loose.
BOILED EGG
There was a kitchen and a woman. The woman was boiling an egg. An egg she had
collected from her chicken pen that same morning. Like most days, her time was her own on
and on this day she let the morning stretch out. For an outsider, it was curious how she hated
mornings, but always let them drag out until well into the afternoon. It was almost like she
resisted that the day should ever begin.
WHEN MAKING PAPER ISLANDS
When making paper islands, one must keep in mind that it is hard, tedious and repetitive
work. All the fun has gone ahead. What is left is paper, glue stick, and the weight of a
promise that was made a long time ago.
SWIMMING
You go to one side of the island to swim. I go to the other. Your side coated in shade. I go where the sun
shines, unwilling to sacrifice. Even for you.
SUN
I am closer to the sun here, but it is a different sun. A sun that hangs low on the sky. A sun that owes you
nothing. It is not here for me. It is your sun.
FINNISH FORESTS
Finnish forests are not a dangerous place, they say. It is not the bears and the wolves you should be afraid of.
FALL
Fall came in a week. We were unprepared. Now, I am humbled by what will follow.
THE TOWER
There was a lighthouse. Except it wasn’t a lighthouse, it was just a tower built to demonstrate wealth.
HORSE
“She is loyal as a horse”, she thought about herself on one of the good days.
ABOUT BREAD AND CHOICE
I gravitate towards unsliced bread for the illusion of choice.
WHAT IS AN ISLAND
What is an island and what is a strip of land separated by strips of water. It can be hard to tell.